Gerda Neyer

Autonomy or conservative adjustment? The effect of public policies and educational attainment on third births in Austria

The standardized rate of third births declined by over 50 percent in Austria between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s. The third birth was also postponed gradually over the years until 1991-92, after which the tempo of childbearing suddenly increased in response to a change in the parental-leave policy. This new policy inadvertently favoured women who had their second or subsequent child shortly after their previous one. We cannot find any indication that the general decline in third births can be seen as a consequence of womens increasing independence from their husbands at the stage in life we study. Furthermore, it still seems to be more difficult to combine motherhood and labour-force participation in Austria than in Sweden, which is a leader in reducing this incompatibility. These developments reflect the tension between advancing gender equality and the dominance of traditional norms in Austria.

Welfare States, Family Policies, and Fertility in Europe

This contribution discusses the potentials of welfare-state approaches for fertility research in Europe. Demographers mostly concentrate on family policies and their effects on fertility. They usually find no fertility-elevating effects of individual family policies or only small effects on the aggregate level. This has led them to turn their attention instead to welfare states and to national configurations of social and family policies. In this contribution, I argue that welfare-state and single-policy approaches complement each other and that both are needed for a better understanding of fertility developments. I outline the main concepts of the welfare state and their usefulness for fertility research, underlining two aspects in particular: First, the relative persistence of the orientation of a welfare state provides a framework to assess the effects of policies and policy changes across countries and over time. Second, different welfare states are associated with different labor-market and educational systems, which allows us to view fertility behavior within a framework of interrelated complementary institutions.

The demography of Europe

Over the past decades Europe has witnessed fundamental changes of its population dynamics and population structure. Fertility has fallen below replacement level in almost all European countries, while childbearing behavior and family formation have become more diverse. Life expectancy has increased in Western Europe for both females and males, but has been declining for men in some Eastern European countries. Immigration from non-European countries has increased substantially, as has mobility within Europe. These changes pose major challenges to population studies, as conventional theoretical assumptions regarding demographic behavior and demographic development seem unfit to provide convincing explanations of the recent demographic changes.This book, derived from the symposium on “The Demography of Europe” held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany in November 2007 in honor of Professor Jan M. Hoem, brings together leading population researchers in the area of fertility, family, migration, life-expectancy, and mortality. The contributions present key issues of the new demography of Europe and discuss key research advances to understand the continent’s demographic development at the turn of the 21st century.

Education, Gender, and Cohort Fertility in the Nordic Countries

Systematic comparisons of fertility developments based on education, gender and country context are rare. Using harmonized register data, we compare cohort total fertility and ultimate childlessness by gender and educational attainment for cohorts born beginning in 1940 in four Nordic countries. Cohort fertility (CTF) initially declined in all four countries, although for cohorts born in the 1950s and later, the CTF remained stable or declined only modestly. Childlessness, which had been increasing, has plateaued in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Women’s negative educational gradient in relation to total fertility has vanished, except in Finland, while men’s positive gradient has persisted. The highest level of men’s childlessness appears among the least educated. In the oldest female cohorts, childlessness was highest among the highly educated, but these patterns have changed over the cohorts as childlessness has increased among the low educated and remained relatively stable among higher educated women. In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, childlessness is now highest among the least educated women. We witness both a new gender similarity and persistent (among men) and new (among women) educational disparities in childbearing outcomes in the Nordic region. Overall, the number of low educated has decreased remarkably over time. These population segments face increasing social and economic disadvantages that are reflected as well in their patterns of family formation.

Education and Childlessness: The Influence of Educational Field and Educational Level on Childlessness among Swedish and Austrian Women

This article deals with the question of how different institutional structures affect ultimate levels of childlessness. We compare rates of childlessness by educational field and educational level among women born in 1955–1959 in two different welfare states: Austria and Sweden. We find similar patterns of childlessness by educational field in both countries: i.e., women who have been educated to work in the education or health sector have lower rates of childlessness than women who have been educated to work in most other occupational fields. However, rates of childlessness by educational level differ markedly between the two countries: Austrian women with upper-secondary or tertiary education are significantly more likely to be childless than Swedish women with comparable levels of education and Austrian women with lower levels of education. We attribute these differences to the educational systems, the labour market structures, and the family policies of the two countries; which in Sweden promote equality across educational groups, and in Austria create cleavages between educational groups. We conclude with reflections on the implications of our results for demographic research on education and fertility.

Kinderlosigkeit, Bildungsrichtung und Bildungsniveau. Ergebnisse einer Untersuchung schwedischer Frauen der Geburtenjahrgänge 1955—59

There has been a lot of demographic research concerning the relationship between education and fertility. Most studies, however, focus on the level of education and do not include the field of education. Our paper shows that the field of education serves as a better indicator of a woman’s potential reproductive behavior than the level of education does. Our empirical investigation uses register records containing childbearing and educational information for all Swedish women born 1955-59. We find that childlessness increases with the educational level, but this finding applies only for each educational field. At each educational level there exist great differences in childlessness among women of different educational fields. Our results indicate that studies of the relationship between education and fertility need to include individual as well as institutional and normative aspects in order to reach explanations of the varying effects of education on childbearing behavior. Zusammenfassung: Die Beziehung zwischen Bildung und Fertilitat gehort zu den am meisten beforschten Bereichen der Demografie. Dennoch fehlen bislang demografische Untersuchungen, die neben dem Bildungsgrad auch die Bildungsrichtung berucksichtigen. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, dass die Bildungsrichtung ein besserer Indikator fur das potentielle Geburtenverhalten einer Frau sein kann als der Bildungsgrad. Auf der Basis schwedischer Registerdaten betrachten wir die Kinderlosigkeit aller schwedischen Frauen der Geburtenjahrgange 1955-59. Mit steigendem Bildungsgrad nimmt zwar der Anteil kinderlos bleibender Frauen zu; doch gilt dies nur jeweils innerhalb einer Bildungsrichtung. Auch bei gleichem Bildungsniveau variiert der Anteil der Kinderlosen je nach Bildungsrichtung betrachtlich. Diese Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass die Zusammenhange zwischen Bildung und Fertilitat nur durch Forschungsansatze, die neben individuellen auch institutionelle und normative Aspekte von Bildung berucksichtigen, hinreichend erklart werden konnen. (childlessness)

The Demography of Europe: Introduction

Over the past decades Europe has witnessed fundamental changes of its population dynamics and population structure. These changes pose major challenges to population studies, as conventional theoretical assumptions regarding demographic behavior and demographic development seem unfit to provide convincing explanations of the recent demographic changes. This book, derived from the symposium on “The Demography of Europe” held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, in 2007 in honor of Professor Jan M. Hoem, brings together leading population researchers in the area of fertility, family, migration, life expectancy, and mortality. The contributions present key issues of the new Demography of Europe and discuss research advances to understand the continent’s demographic development at the turn of the 21st century.